Part 2: On and off post, trials in private life

From here to Iraq

FRUSTRATION ALL AROUND. Ian isn't where he's supposed to be - Fort Carson. Instead, he and Pvt. 2 Jonathan Duenez are on Ian's bed back home in Morrison on March 31, 2008. Eric Fisher worries they may be AWOL and that Ian's assignment at Fort Carson, so close to home, is
impeding his military career. "You really don't realize you're in the military yet, by coming home every weekend," Eric says. "Maybe you need to stay down there." The two soldiers returned to base the next day. (THE DENVER POST | CRAIG F. WALKER)

Late that afternoon, the platoon returned to the field and did more stack maneuvers on more "glass houses." Armstrong grew frustrated with the unit's inability to get it right — especially because he anticipated that many of their missions in Iraq would take place in urban environments and close quarters.

"Clearing a room needs to be second nature to a soldier," he chastised them. "It's got to be muscle memory. I'm not making you do this over and over because I like watching you run around out here."

By 5 the next morning, the platoon was on the move for that day's maneuver — the capture of a man named Abu Buchta, a fictional target believed to attend prayers at the village mosque. About 30 Iraqi-Americans, hired through a contractor, played the parts of the villagers.

One of them, 40-year-old Joe Chamsi, moved to the U.S. from Baghdad in 1987 and spoke five languages. He played the role of interpreter. He'd taken the job in the hope that by teaching American soldiers about Iraqi culture, he might save lives.

REDEMPTION. Full of laughter and energy after returning from a mission at the National Training Center, platoon
members compete in ground fighting techniques May 4, 2008. Fisher celebrates with Pvt. Robert Bonner of Wheat Ridge after Bonner's victory, a day after he struggled on a climb up a steep ridge. (THE DENVER POST | CRAIG F. WALKER)

"I want the soldiers to be educated when they go to Iraq," Chamsi said. "If there is less shooting, less soldiers die. And less mothers and fathers die."

In the drill, the platoon had to coordinate with the local police force to apprehend the target. Though the first effort failed, the second attempt went a little more smoothly.

One squad entered the village cautiously and took enemy fire. Fisher's squad followed on foot and quickly secured one building. While the soldiers negotiated with the "mayor" for his assistance, the target was found and captured.

In the workday world of the 4th Infantry Division, Fisher finally seemed to be finding his rhythm.

It didn't last.

On a Monday morning in late March, Ian was getting ready to go to lunch with his mom in downtown Denver before heading back to Fort Carson. But emotions had overtaken him, a mixture of anger, heartache and regret arriving on the heels of another weekend at home, partying with friends.

He snapped.

He and a platoon buddy, 17-year- old Jonathan Duenez, were due back at the post by 2 p.m. It didn't look as if they would make it — or that they intended to.

"My mom's scared," Ian said. "I can't even tell my dad because he's the one that's so proud of me, so proud of who I've become. I can't bring myself to tell my dad that I've become so weak and I'm doing so many stupid things in my life."

Late that afternoon, though, Ian did call his father — half-crying, saying he just couldn't take this anymore, that he was coming home, that he was going AWOL. For about a half-hour, Eric tried to calm him down. But when they hung up, he still worried.

Finally, about 8 p.m., Ian stood at his front door, along with Duenez.

"What are you doing here?" Eric asked.

"Well," Ian said, "you've been in the Army. We're here to talk to you."

Eric took stock of the situation. Duenez simply looked like a homesick kid, not long out of basic, missing his family and girlfriend back home. He followed Ian's lead, and then their mutual unhappiness spiraled into something like desperation.

TAKING PRIDE. At the end of the national anthem, Ian offers an animated salute while attending a Colorado Rockies game June 7, 2008, with his mother, Teri Mercill. It was one of his many weekends spent away from Fort Carson. (THE DENVER POST | CRAIG F. WALKER)

And the driving force in Ian's emotional meltdown, Eric figured, was his proximity to home. At the start, it had seemed that the posting to Fort Carson was a blessing. Not anymore. He offered simple counsel.

"Maybe you need to quit coming home so often — get into this military thing," Eric told his son. "You really don't realize you're in the military yet, by coming home every weekend. Maybe you need to stay down there."

The two soldiers returned the next day. They marked time with menial duty as they awaited their punishment for taking an unauthorized long weekend. Their platoon sergeant, Joshua Weisensel, pronounced sentence: 14 days of extra duty, a $300 fine.

It could have been much worse, including loss of rank and pay, or even discharge. But Weisensel wanted to put this hiccup behind them. He hoped Fisher would be resilient.

"You give them a little bit of punishment, and if he sucks it up — drives on, continues to soldier — then lesson learned," Weisensel explained. "I think he'll be all right. It'll be over with before we go to Iraq.

"Case closed."

Personal problems receded as Fisher and his unit entered their final war-games training for Iraq in the Mojave Desert.

The National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., covers 1,200 square miles of arid flats and jagged mountains between Los Angeles and Las Vegas where each year 50,000 U.S. soldiers go through a series of carefully designed scenarios. Military contractors have constructed replicas of Iraqi villages inhabited by role-playing Iraqi-Americans.

Production crews gave battle scenes authenticity, right down to simulated bomb blasts and bloody amputations. It marked the closest to reality that an untested soldier could experience before shipping out.

In one early exercise, Fisher's unit, led by Armstrong, rumbled along in four Humvees toward a mountain objective. They traversed a steep slope in search of potential enemy mortar pits.

Armstrong, who had grown up poor in rural Arkansas, already had seen combat in Iraq. Now, he looked at the soldiers under his command and saw kids who seemed sheltered and soft.

He needed to change that in order to bring them home alive from Iraq.

On a landscape strewn with boulders, scrub oak and cactus, where black lizards intermittently scurried across the terrain, Armstrong ordered his men to fan out and climb toward a ridgeline, searching for evidence of mortar launch sites.

They trudged along, laden with equipment and battle armor, up a 1,000-foot vertical rise. Some soldiers gulped their entire water supplies within a half-hour. Fisher paced himself.

But about halfway up, Pvt. Robert Bonner collapsed.

Bonner, fresh out of basic training, gathered himself and wobbled along for another 20 yards up the ravine — and then buckled again. Ashen- faced, he lay on his back, glasses fogging, searching for something — anything — to get him up the hill.

SWEPT CLEAN. Fisher looks to see whether any superiors are around before sweeping trash under a locker at Fort Carson on May 29, 2008. He is pulling extra duty as punishment for not reporting back to post on time back in March. "You give them a little bit of punishment, and if he sucks it up, then lesson learned," his platoon sergeant said. (THE DENVER POST | CRAIG F. WALKER)

Getting no sympathy from Armstrong, Bonner rose to his feet and tried again. He collapsed. Other members of the platoon hurled mocking epithets as motivation. Armstrong conferred with other sergeants about whether to evacuate the struggling private from the drill or push him harder.

They decided to push. Fisher felt for the newcomer — but only a little.

"If I was in Iraq," he said, crouching on one knee in the ravine, "I'd beat his ass myself. . . . You gotta make yourself capable."

Fisher rose and turned to power his way up the mountain. Bonner struggled to his feet and eventually made it to the ridgeline. The Army designed the desert exercise to push soldiers to their limits, past pain and discomfort.

The next day, the troops prepared for a night mission searching a stretch of mountain range for the enemy and possible mortar activity. The company medic offered a small plastic bottle to Bonner.

"Take four of these," he said.

"What is this?" Bonner asked.

"It's Motrin — let me see that," Fisher interrupted.

Bonner tossed him the bottle. He crammed six pills into his mouth and gulped some water from his camelback.

"That's how you take pills," Fisher said, smiling.

The troops loaded into their vehicles and moved toward a steep mountainside, where they found a white truck abandoned at the base. Inside the vehicle, they discovered two shovels, a GPS device and ammunition.

Armstrong gathered Fisher and the rest of his squad and began the climb up the slope. Soon, they came across a mortar pit and continued their search along the ridgeline. In fading light, Fisher hailed the others in his unit.

"How do you say, 'Hands up'?" he hollered, looking for the Arabic translation. Then he repeated the question and pointed to a spot on the mountainside. "Right there — behind that bush!"

A bearded man emerged.

The play-actor in this scenario identified himself as a resident of the nearby village. He explained that he had been helping a friend, who had been discovered nearby, recover a delivery truck stolen by insurgents. The two men tried — unsuccessfully — to talk the soldiers into releasing them.

The squad scrambled down the mountain in darkness, using night- vision goggles that illuminated their path but distorted their depth perception. Almost to the bottom, Fisher stumbled and fell hard, twisting his right ankle — the same one he had hurt on the training run at Fort Carson.

He limped back to his vehicle.

By the time the prisoners had been transported and processed, it was 4 a.m. on May 4, 2008 — Fisher's 19th birthday. After two hours of sleep, he sat on his bed wrapping his foot and ankle with a bandage.

"I'm beginning to think I'm made of glass," he said.

Later, he came across Weisensel complimenting Armstrong for the job the unit had done the night before. Both men they had taken into custody turned out to be "high-value targets" in the exercise.

Weisensel turned toward him.

"Good eyes, Fisher," he said.

But the boost for his good work in the field later gave way to disappointment. The company medic wanted Fisher to get another opinion on his injured ankle. Now, Fisher returned with crutches and another prescription for Vicodin.

BREAKING DOWN. Ian is comforted by friend Charles Gilmore as Ian struggles with his problems with the Army and with his latest girlfriend, Kirsten, during a party at Gilmore's apartment Aug. 1, 2008. With one foot in the Army and one foot back home with friends, he's beginning to feel as if he's not fitting
in either place. "I'd just like to have a new beginning or a new life," Ian says. (THE DENVER POST | CRAIG F. WALKER)